Statistics (noun) - The practice or science of collecting and analyzing numerical data in large quantities. http://www.google.com/search?q=definition+statistic

Statistics (noun) - The practice or science of collecting and analyzing numerical data in large quantities. http://www.google.com/search?q=definition+statistics http://www.google.com/search?q=definition+statistics And I would argue that qualification that the data be "numerical" in this definition is wrong. Plenty of statistical analysis invokes categorical text data (e.g. sex, race, occupation...).